


hollow out your heart, refill it, watch it kindle

by earlofcardigans



Series: dirt and light [1]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-15
Updated: 2009-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlofcardigans/pseuds/earlofcardigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>mahoni's</b> mcrsecretsanta present. :D She asked for Bob/Gerard/Lindsey and something centered around his birthday, and while this is not that fic exactly, it is still close.  pg (because that's how I roll), and slightly angsty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hollow out your heart, refill it, watch it kindle

He doesn't mean to call Bob so late. He never means to, Lindsey says, and she's right, but there are just times when the only thing that cuts through Gerard's sleepless, fuzzy haze is Bob's voice. He quit trying to figure that out a long time ago. Bob lets Gerard attach himself to him, and he anchors all of them. Gerard needs that more than Lindsey, he knows, and sometimes he needs to hear Bob to know that they are on the same plane, that they are still _Bob and Gerard_ and nothing has changed in the darkest dark past midnight and crept up to somehow lie to him.

He doesn't bother leaving the bed, doesn't bother saying hi even when Bob answers. Gerard wants a timeline. It's all he ever wants: a countdown to when he knows things will be back to even, no matter the odds.

"Are you coming home? For Christmas, I mean." Gerard rolls over and breathes Lindsey's scent from his pillow. He knows Bob can still hear him, still understand him.

Gerard knows it's cheesy, but when he listens to Bob spark a cigarette and not answer him, he thinks about how Bob has been the only one that always heard him. Until Bob, until Lindsey, Gerard hadn't been sure of anything in his head. No matter what Mikey said.

Bob makes Gerard believe, and even if he refuses to see it, Gerard knows that Bob and Lindsey's conviction in him is sometimes the only thing that keeps him going.  
;;

When Bob answers him, he props his feet up on the railing and pictures Gerard curled around his ugly red plaid pillow in that big bedroom Lindsey had talked them into even though they didn't need it. Bob shouldn't be outside. It's uncomfortably cold and he's achy in his joints, but it's his only time to be this alone. Bob ignores the aches in other places and watches the smoke he exhales drift into the trees.

"I don't know, Gee. I want to, but. Christmas." Bob knows that Gerard gets it. He might have been the only person that would, which was so fucking weird to Bob since it was Gerard and what he had was so different from whatever Bob had grown up with.

"We'd like it if you did. At least your birthday? Can you make that?" Bob can tell Gerard has reached that level of sleeplessness where all his consonants float off at the end and Gerard can't get them back no matter how hard he squints.

"I want to." Bob whispers like he didn't say it at all. If he doesn't say it, if he doesn't admit out loud how disconnected he feels when he's separated from Lindsey and Gerard for so long, then it can't come back and haunt him later.

"We miss you so fucking much." Gerard swallows, messy, all his hard-K sounds. "You know that, right. It's too big when you're not here."

"I know." He does. Bob so fucking knows. He sits up and moves sharply back through the house, tells Gerard in decisive tones, "I miss you, too. Now get some sleep. I'll let you know after Christmas."  
;;

Lindsey knows the minute Gerard leaves the bed. She knew he wasn't asleep; she knows why he's leaving now. These are the nights she misses Bob the most. She can't just roll over into his heat and bury her face in his neck, cover her eyes with her hair and go back to sleep. She always stays up with Gerard when it's just them. Even if he doesn't know. She tells herself she'd stay up with Bob, too, but he never stays up. He never needs her like that.

She doesn't roll over into Gerard's space and instead throws her hand over her head, imagines her hair as snakes or a halo of intestines. Bob would laugh at that if she told him; Gerard would draw it for her.

When she closes her eyes again, she can see the exact moment she knew she needed two people to lean on, two people that were more intertwined than she would ever be with either of them. She absently rubs a hand over her chest and squeezes her eyes shut.

She stays up listening to Gerard destroy, restructure, and recreate until it's just the same cadence of their voices.

Gerard crawls back into bed, back to her, so much later, that she's heavy with exhaustion, but she cradles him when he needs it, pushes his hair back off his face.

And when he says into her shoulder "I miss Bob," she kisses the top of his head and says, "I know, baby." She knows because it's a constant sort of ache.  
;;

Bob thinks he should have stayed with his mom for his birthday. He thinks about it all the way to the front door of the house he helped pick out with the ridiculous snapdragons in the front that Lindsey can't keep alive to save her life, with the Care Bear sheet tacked up in the window of Gerard's study because he doesn't want to look for a curtain.

He's pretty sure he shouldn't have come home just because he was lonely and tired and he hurt. He's been through worse. But when he sees Lindsey dance through the foyer with her headphones on and a screwdriver in her hand, he ducks his head and smiles at the welcome mat.

He doesn't get a chance to open the door though, before Gerard is there, throwing his future whereabouts over his shoulder into an empty room and almost colliding with him.

When Gerard looks up at him, and his happy ugly smile blooms over his face, Bob is pretty stoked to be home. Damn him.

Gerard is careful when he grabs Bob by the elbow and shuffles them back into the house.

"I was just going to see Mikey. We were getting Transformers and maybe something in 3-D, but you are so much better." Gerard stops to wrap arms around Bob, and Bob rubs his cheek over Gerard's hair, settles into the feeling of how much _home_ Gerard is.

Gerard pulls back and swats at him, "You didn't call."

"I have to call now when I want to come home unexpectedly?" Bob flicks Gerard on the nose and waits for Lindsey. He thinks about how it's kind of like the beginning, when he had to wait for Lindsey to come around to him, but then she spots him and grins big.

"What the fuck are you doing home? You didn't call." She walks him backward toward the couch and crawls into his lap. Gerard sits on the arm of the couch and plays with Bob's hair.

"Again with the calling. Don't I live here?" Bob hates it, but he can still hear that note of hesitancy in his voice.

But Gerard says, "Damn right you do" and slides down next to them.


End file.
